The Murder of Iryna Zarutska
On August 22, 2025, a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant named Iryna Zarutska was killed in a vicious knife attack while aboard a train in North Carolina.
Video circulating on social media shows the full attack. Her family asked that the media not to circulate the footage publicly… we sympathize very strongly with editors and individuals who have decided that the footage is within the public interest.
We have published short excerpts below that we believe are within the public interest because the video is shocking beyond the brutal murder itself.
In the footage we didn’t share, a man sitting behind Iryna on the train pulls out what appears to be a knife. He then stabs her repeatedly before getting up and walking away, leaving a trail of her blood behind him.
This is about where our clips begin. Other passengers eventually come to her aid… eventually. Not until after she bleeds out in her seat before slumping to the floor to die alone.
From the moment the suspect walks away, it takes nearly two minutes for anyone to approach Iryna and try to render aid or comfort in her last moments.
Other passengers can be seen getting up and simply walking away right past her as she takes what will be her lasts breaths. The suspect, meanwhile, paces the train car, removing his shirts and muttering to himself.
No one intervened to detain him or even disarm him to render him less of a threat to others, including the man in the video above who appears to follow the suspect off camera. As you can see in the video below, the man actually just powerwalks away past the suspect.
Many on social media have compared this horrific crime to the situation with Daniel Penny, who was eventually found not guilty in what has been called the NYC subway chokehold trial.
Penny, a 26-year-old Marine veteran, was charged with the negligent homicide of homeless man Jordan Neely, 30, after Penny intervened when Neely began making threats at the passengers sharing his subway car.
Neely died amidst Penny’s attempt to restrain him and keep his fellow passengers safe. Iryna’s murder is also reminiscent of the famed Kitty Genovese case in this way.
There is another aspect in which this case is reminiscent of others - we’ve written about many such cases here in Crime Culture Media - where a dangerous lunatic is essentially allowed to terrorize the public with seeming impunity.
In this case, the suspect was identified as Decarlos Brown, Jr., 34, by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. He is charged with first-degree murder in connection with Iryna Zarutska's death.
He was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries sustained during his attack before being released into police custody.
Reports say that Brown has been arrested over a dozen times on a variety of offenses, some of them violent. He is reportedly homeless as well as schizophrenic.
Brown served five years in prison for a 2014 armed robbery; after his release in September 2020, Brown was arrested a few months later in February 2021.
He was charged with assaulting his sister in Charlotte, leaving her with minor injuries, according to police records obtained by the Daily Mail. Later the same month, he was arrested for injury to personal property and trespassing.
A police report from that incident said Brown “returned to the address after being told he was not allowed back and kicked and damaged the front door of the listed victim's residence.”
In July 2022, Brown was arrested again:
“[Brown] was arrested for disorderly conduct. The suspect was yelling and cursing, causing a disturbance and drawing the attention of multiple tenants while on the property.”
In fact, Brown's criminal record goes back to when he was still a minor. Despite all this, Brown was reportedly released a few months ago with nothing more than a promise to appear at his next court date.
A GoFundMe account has been set up to help Zarutska's family with funeral expenses. The fundraiser, which so far has collected over $200,000, said that she had only recently come to the United States.
Zarutska's obituary said that she emigrated from the Ukraine with her mother, sister, and brother to escape the war with Russia. She "quickly embraced her new life" in America and had recently moved in with a partner.
US Attorney Russ Ferguson said that her family declined to have her body returned to Ukraine, telling authorities she would have wanted to be buried in the US because “she loved America.”
According to her obituary, Iryna was…
"A gifted and passionate artist [who] graduated from Synergy College in Kyiv with a degree in Art and Restoration. She shared her creativity generously, gifting family and friends with her artwork. She loved sculpting and designing unique, eclectic clothing that reflected her vibrant spirit."
